Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 21, 1990 TAG: 9004210391
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES and PETER MATHEWS NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
He did. And he lived up to the advance billing.
White America has been "miseducating" blacks for centuries, he said, depicting George Washington as the honest father of the country when, in fact, "he was a lying, no-good slave master . . . who used black women as bed warmers and belly warmers."
"I didn't make George do that. Don't get angry at me . . . for pulling the wig off George," Muhammad boomed into the microphone as he circled the lectern.
With each step, he was flanked by two bodyguards. A third stood behind him and two more - wearing the Nation's trademark dark suit, white shirt and red bow tie - were stationed at each end of the Burruss Hall stage.
"You want us to read your history, but you don't want us to read your real history," he said, addressing the few whites in the audience.
To the 100 students, almost all of them black, Muhammad said: "If a people won't treat you right, what makes you think they'll teach you right?"
Fathers of mathematics, medicine and engineering were black, he told them. Blacks were created first by God and built great civilizations in Africa while whites in Europe slept in caves - surrounded by their excrement and dead relatives.
God, Jesus and the angels were black, he said. But when blacks pray, "You see a white man in your mind. No wonder why your prayers don't get answered. You're not praying to God; you're praying to the white man."
While Muhammad spoke, 10 police officers in plain clothes lined the back of the auditorium. One or two wandered the lobby.
Some 45 minutes into the lecture, most of the officers wandered out into the lobby and began munching on pizza, talking quietly.
The litany continued.
There was AIDS, "which didn't come from a green monkey. It came from a white monkey - with a suit and a white coat. Don't you put it past white folks," he cautioned the blacks there.
Voice rising, he said: "Don't you put it past them that AIDS - which is spreading through Africa . . . which is spreading through the black community - is a tool for black genocide."
A lecture Muhammad delivered earlier this month at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg reportedly was rife with anti-Semitism, which concerned Tech officials as they prepared for his arrival.
But he limited his remarks about Jews mostly to criticism of the Oscar-winning movie "Driving Miss Daisy." He said the movie's black chauffeur - reminiscent of Amos and Andy and Stepin' Fetchit - denigrated blacks, and that the chauffeur's Jewish employer did not care about blacks' suffering.
The lecture, part of the "Black Family Day," had been moved from Owens Dining Hall to Burruss because black student leaders had not advised the university of Muhammad's appearance until Thursday, officials said.
by CNB